===========================
世界上最远的距离
不是星星之间的轨迹
而是纵然轨迹交汇
却在转瞬间无处寻觅
=========================================
AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN
In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman. She had a
quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling
complexion, and a certain languid grace which passed easily for
gentle-womanliness. She always dressed becomingly, and in what
Fiddletown accepted as the latest fashion. She had only two
blemishes: one of her velvety eyes, when examined closely, had a
slight cast; and her left cheek bore a small scar left by a single
drop of vitriol-- happily the only drop of an entire phial--thrown
upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that reached the pretty
face it was intended to mar. But when the observer had studied the
eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally
incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek was
thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor
of THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was "an
exaggerated dimple." Colonel Starbottle was instantly "reminded of
the beautifying patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more
particularly, sir, of the blankest beautiful women that, blank you,
you ever laid your two blank eyes upon--a Creole woman, sir, in New
Orleans. And this woman had a scar--a line extending, blank me,
from her eye to her blank chin. And this woman, sir, thrilled you,
sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent your blank soul to
perdition with her blank fascination! And one day I said to her,
'Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar, blank
you?' And she said to me, 'Star, there isn't another white man
that I'd confide in but you; but I made that scar myself,
purposely, I did, blank me.' These were her very words, sir, and
perhaps you think it a blank lie, sir; but I'll put up any blank
sum you can name and prove it, blank me."
Indeed, most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been
in love with her. Of this number, about one-half believed that
their love was returned, with the exception, possibly, of her own
husband. He alone had been known to express skepticism.
The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction
was Tretherick. He had been divorced from an excellent wife to
marry this Fiddletown enchantress. She, also, had been divorced;
but it was hinted that some previous experiences of hers in that
legal formality had made it perhaps less novel, and probably less
sacrificial. I would not have it inferred from this that she was
deficient in sentiment, or devoid of its highest moral expression.
Her intimate friend had written (on the occasion of her second
divorce), "The cold world does not und
erstand Clara yet"; and
Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the exception of
a single woman in Opelousas Parish, La., she had more soul than the
whole caboodle of them put together. Few indeed could read those
lines entitled "Infelissimus," commencing "Why waves no cypress
o'er this brow?" originally published in the AVALANCHE, over the
signature of "The Lady Clare," without feeling the tear of
sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous
indignation mantle his cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable
jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had
suggested the exotic character of the cypress, and its entire
absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable answer to the query.
Indeed, it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a
metrical manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the
medium of the newspapers, that first attracted the attention of
Tretherick. Several poems descriptive of the effects of California
scenery upon a too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for
the infinite which an enforced study of the heartlessness of
California society produced in the poetic breast, impressed Mr.
Tretherick, who was then driving a six-mule freight wagon between
Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown poetess. Mr.
Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden
sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some
reflections on the vanity of his pursuit--he supplied several
mining camps with whisky and tobacco--in conjunction with the
dreariness of the dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may
have touched some chord in sympathy with this sensitive woman.
Howbeit, after a brief courtship--as brief as was consistent with
some previous legal formalities--they were married; and Mr.
Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or
"Fideletown," as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.
The union was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr.
Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while
freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from
that which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of
California scenery and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect
logic, this caused him to beat her; and she, being equally faulty
in deduction, was impelled to a certain degree of unfaithfulness on
the same premise. Then Mr. Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs.
Tretherick to contribute regularly to the columns of the AVALANCHE.
It was at this time that Colonel Starbottle discovered a similarity
in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the genius of Sappho, and pointed it
out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a two-columned criticism,
signed "A. S.," also published in the AVALANCHE, and supported by
extensive quotation. As the AVALANCHE did not possess a font of
Greek type, the edito
r was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian
numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of
Colonel Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit
to accept the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw--a language
with which the colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian
Territories, was supposed to be familiar. Indeed, the next week's
INTELLIGENCER contained some vile doggerel supposed to be an answer
to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly written by the wife of a
Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing eulogium signed "A.
S. S."
The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of
the AVALANCHE. "An unfortunate rencounter took place on Monday
last, between the Hon. Jackson Flash of THE DUTCH FLAT
INTELLIGENCER and the well-known Col. Starbottle of this place, in
front of the Eureka Saloon. Two shots were fired by the parties
without injury to either, although it is said that a passing
Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the calves of his legs from
the colonel's double-barreled shotgun, which were not intended for
him. John will learn to keep out of the way of Melican man's
firearms hereafter. The cause of the affray is not known, although
it is hinted that there is a lady in the case. The rumor that
points to a well-known and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations
have often graced our columns seems to gain credence from those
that are posted."
Meanwhile the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these
trying circumstances was fully appreciated in the gulches. "The
old man's head is level," said one long-booted philosopher. "Ef
the colonel kills Flash, Mrs. Tretherick is avenged: if Flash drops
the colonel, Tretherick is all right. Either way, he's got a sure
thing." During this delicate condition of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick
one day left her husband's home and took refuge at the Fiddletown
Hotel, with only the clothes she had on her back. Here she staid
for several weeks, during which period it is only justice to say
that she bore herself with the strictest propriety.
It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick,
unattended, left the hotel, and walked down the narrow street
toward the fringe of dark pines which indicated the extreme limits
of Fiddletown. The few loungers at that early hour were
preoccupied with the departure of the Wingdown coach at the other
extremity of the street; and Mrs. Tretherick reached the suburbs of
the settlement without discomposing observation. Here she took a
cross street or road, running at right angles with the main
thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland.
It was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town.
The dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops. And
here she was joined by Colonel Starbottle.
The gallant colonel, notwit
hstanding that he bore the swelling port
which usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned
and his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his
arm, swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs.
Tretherick, however, vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance
of her dangerous eyes; and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough
and a slight strut, took his place at her side.
"The coast is clear," said the colonel, "and Tretherick is over at
Dutch Flat on a spree. There is no one in the house but a
Chinaman; and you need fear no trouble from him. I," he continued,
with a slight inflation of the chest that imperiled the security of
his button, "I will see that you are protected in the removal of
your property."
"I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested!" simpered
the lady as they walked along. "It's so pleasant to meet someone
who has soul--someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened
and heartless as this." And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes,
but not until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her
companion.
"Yes, certainly, of course," said the colonel, glancing nervously
up and down the street--"yes, certainly." Perceiving, however,
that there was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to
inform Mrs. Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact,
had been the possession of too much soul. That many women--as a
gentleman she would excuse him, of course, from mentioning names--
but many beautiful women had often sought his society, but being
deficient, madam, absolutely deficient, in this quality, he could
not reciprocate. But when two natures thoroughly in sympathy,
despising alike the sordid trammels of a low and vulgar community
and the conventional restraints of a hypocritical society--when two
souls in perfect accord met and mingled in poetical union, then--
but here the colonel's speech, which had been remarkable for a
certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost inaudible,
and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have heard
something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus.
Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was
quite virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their
destination.
It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint,
very pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose
foremost files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced
enclosure in which it sat. In the vivid sunlight and perfect
silence, it had a new, uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and
painters had just left it. At the farther end of the lot, a
Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there was no other sign of
occupancy. "The coast," as the colonel had said, was indeed
"clear." Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate. The
colonel would
have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture. "Come for me
in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed," she
said, as she smiled, and extended her hand. The colonel seized and
pressed it with great fervor. Perhaps the pressure was slightly
returned; for the gallant colonel was impelled to inflate his
chest, and trip away as smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled
boots would permit. When he had gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the
door, listened a moment in the deserted hall, and then ran quickly
upstairs to what had been her bedroom.
Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it. On the
dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it
when she took out her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other glove
she had forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the
bureau were half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its
marble top lay her shawl pin and a soiled cuff. What other
recollections came upon her I know not; but she suddenly grew quite
white, shivered, and listened with a beating heart, and her hand
upon the door. Then she stepped to the mirror, and half-fearfully,
half-curiously, parted with her fingers the braids of her blond
hair above her little pink ear, until she came upon an ugly, half-
healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty head up and down
to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast in her velvety
eyes became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned away with
a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where hung
her precious dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing
suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a
moment, thought she should have fainted. But discovering it the
next instant lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling
of thankfulness to a superior Being who protects the friendless for
the first time sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she was
hurried for time, she could not resist trying the effect of a
certain lavender neck ribbon upon the dress she was then wearing,
before the mirror. And then suddenly she became aware of a child's
voice close beside her, and she stopped. And then the child's
voice repeated, "Is it Mamma?"
Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about. Standing in the doorway was a
little girl of six or seven. Her dress had been originally fine,
but was torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red,
was tumbled seriocomically about her forehead. For all this, she
was a picturesque little thing, even through whose childish
timidity there was a certain self-sustained air which is apt to
come upon children who are left much to themselves. She was
holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently of her own
workmanship, and nearly as large as herself--a doll with a
cylindrical head, and features roughly in
dicated with charcoal. A
long shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her
shoulders and swept the floor.
The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight. Perhaps
she had but a small sense of humor. Certainly, when the child,
still standing in the doorway, again asked, "Is it Mamma?" she
answered sharply, "No, it isn't," and turned a severe look upon the
intruder.
The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the
distance, said in deliciously imperfect speech:
"Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?"
But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it
off the child's shoulders, and said angrily:
"How dared you take my things, you bad child?"
"Is it yours? Then you are my mamma; ain't you? You are Mamma!"
she continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid
her, she had dropped her doll, and, catching the woman's skirts
with both hands, was dancing up and down before her.
"What's your name, child?" said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing
the small and not very white hands from her garments.
"Tarry."
"Tarry?"
"Yeth. Tarry. Tarowline."
"Caroline?"
"Yeth. Tarowline Tretherick."
"Whose child ARE you?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly,
to keep down a rising fear.
"Why, yours," said the little creature with a laugh. "I'm your
little durl. You're my mamma, my new mamma. Don't you know my ol'
mamma's dorn away, never to turn back any more? I don't live wid
my ol' mamma now. I live wid you and Papa."
"How long have you been here?" asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.
"I fink it's free days," said Carry reflectively.
"You think! Don't you know?" sneered Mrs. Tretherick. "Then,
where did you come from?"
Carry's lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination. With
a great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and
answered:
"Papa, Papa fetched me--from Miss Simmons--from Sacramento, last
week."
"Last week! You said three days just now," returned Mrs.
Tretherick with severe deliberation.
"I mean a monf," said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer
helplessness and confusion.
"Do you know what you are talking about?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick
shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before
her and precipitate the truth by specific gravity.
But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of
Mrs. Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself
forever.
"There now--stop that sniffling," said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating
her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling
exceedingly uncomfortable. "Wipe your face now, and run away, and
don't bother. Stop," she continued, as Carry moved away. "Where's
your papa?"
"He's dorn away too. He's sick. He's
been dorn"--she hesitated--
"two, free, days."
"Who takes care of you, child?" said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her
curiously.
"John, the Chinaman. I tresses myselth. John tooks and makes the
beds."
"Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any
more," said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit.
"Stop--where are you going?" she added as the child began to ascend
the stairs, dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.
"Doin' upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma."
"I ain't your mamma," shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly
re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.
Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set
to work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe. She
tore her best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung:
she scratched her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin. All the
while, she kept up an indignant commentary on the events of the
past few moments. She said to herself she saw it all. Tretherick
had sent for this child of his first wife--this child of whose
existence he had never seemed to care--just to insult her, to fill
her place. Doubtless the first wife herself would follow soon, or
perhaps there would be a third. Red hair, not auburn, but RED--of
course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother, and, if
so, she was anything but pretty. Or the whole thing had been
prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been
kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for
when needed. She remembered his occasional visits there on--
business, as he said. Perhaps the mother already was there; but
no, she had gone East. Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then
state of mind, preferred to dwell upon the fact that she might be
there. She was dimly conscious, also, of a certain satisfaction in
exaggerating her feelings. Surely no woman had ever been so
shamefully abused. In fancy, she sketched a picture of herself
sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among the fallen columns of
a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful attitude, while her
husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious coach-and-four, with a
red-haired woman at his side. Sitting upon the trunk she had just
packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem describing her
sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came upon her
husband and "another" flaunting in silks and diamonds. She
pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow--a
beautiful wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the
editor of the AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was
Colonel Starbottle all this while? Why didn't he come? He, at
least, understood her. He--she laughed the reckless, light laugh
of a few moments before; and then her face suddenly gre
w grave, as
it had not a few moments before.
What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was
she so quiet? She opened the door noiselessly, and listened. She
fancied that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and
creakings and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing
on the floor above. This, as she remembered, was only an open
attic that had been used as a storeroom. With a half-guilty
consciousness, she crept softly upstairs and, pushing the door
partly open, looked within.
Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single
small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half
illuminating the barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this
sunbeam she saw the child's glowing hair, as if crowned by a red
aureole, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll
between her knees. She appeared to be talking to it; and it was
not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was rehearsing
the interview of a half-hour before. She catechized the doll
severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay
there, and generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs.
Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the
conversation almost a literal reproduction, with a single
exception. After she had informed the doll that she was not her
mother, at the close of the interview she added pathetically, "that
if she was dood, very dood, she might be her mamma, and love her
very much."
I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense
of humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene
affected her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood
tingling to her cheek. There was something, too, inconceivably
lonely in the situation. The unfurnished vacant room, the half-
lights, the monstrous doll, whose very size seemed to give a
pathetic significance to its speechlessness, the smallness of the
one animate, self-centered figure--all these touched more or less
deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman. She could not
help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and thought what
a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the room
were a little darker, the child lonelier--say, sitting beside a
dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then
she suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the
tread of the colonel's cane.
She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in
the hall. Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and
exaggerated statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of
her wrongs. "Don't tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged
beforehand; for I know it was!" she almost screamed. "And think,"
she added, "of the heartlessness of the wretch, leaving his own
child alone here in t
hat way."
"It's a blank shame!" stammered the colonel, without the least idea
of what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to
comprehend a reason for the woman's excitement, with his estimate
of her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he
intended. He stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant,
tender, but all unintelligently. Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant,
experienced a sickening doubt of the existence of natures in
perfect affinity.
"It's of no use," said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in
answer to some inaudible remark of the colonel's, and withdrawing
her hand from the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man.
"It's of no use: my mind is made up. You can send for my trunk as
soon as you like; but I shall stay here, and confront that man with
the proof of his vileness. I will put him face to face with his
infamy."
I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the
convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity
afforded by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's
own child in his own house. He was dimly aware, however, of some
unforeseen obstacle to the perfect expression of the infinite
longing of his own sentimental nature. But, before he could say
anything, Carry appeared on the landing above them, looking
timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.
"That's her," said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly. In her deepest
emotions, in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration
of grammatical construction.
"Ah!" said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental
affection and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected.
"Ah! pretty little girl, pretty little girl! How do you do? How
are you? You find yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little
girl?" The colonel's impulse also was to expand his chest and
swing his cane, until it occurred to him that this action might be
ineffective with a child of six or seven. Carry, however, took no
immediate notice of this advance, but further discomposed the
chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick and hiding
herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown.
Nevertheless, the colonel was not vanquished. Falling back into an
attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous
resemblance to the "Madonna and Child." Mrs. Tretherick simpered,
but did not dislodge Carry as before. There was an awkward pause
for a moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to
the child, said in a whisper: "Go now. Don't come here again, but
meet me tonight at the hotel." She extended her hand: the colonel
bent over it gallantly and, raising his hat, the next moment was
gone.
"Do you think," said Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed voice and
a prodigious blush, looking down, and addressin
g the fiery curls
just visible in the folds of her dress--"do you think you will be
'dood' if I let you stay in here and sit with me?"
"And let me tall you Mamma?" queried Carry, looking up.
"And let you call me Mamma!" assented Mrs. Tretherick with an
embarrassed laugh.
"Yeth," said Carry promptly.
They entered the bedroom together. Carry's eye instantly caught
sight of the trunk.
"Are you dowin' away adain, Mamma?" she said with a quick nervous
look, and a clutch at the woman's dress.
"No-o," said Mrs. Tretherick, looking out of the window.
"Only playing your dowin' away," suggested Carry with a laugh.
"Let me play too."
Mrs. Tretherick assented. Carry flew into the next room, and
presently reappeared dragging a small trunk, into which she gravely
proceeded to pack her clothes. Mrs. Tretherick noticed that they
were not many. A question or two regarding them brought out some
further replies from the child; and before many minutes had
elapsed, Mrs. Tretherick was in possession of all her earlier
history. But, to do this, Mrs. Tretherick had been obliged to take
Carry upon her lap, pending the most confidential disclosures.
They sat thus a long time after Mrs. Tretherick had apparently
ceased to be interested in Carry's disclosures; and when lost in
thought, she allowed the child to rattle on unheeded, and ran her
fingers through the scarlet curls.
"You don't hold me right, Mamma," said Carry at last, after one or
two uneasy shiftings of position.
"How should I hold you?" asked Mrs. Tretherick with a half-amused,
half-embarrassed laugh.
"Dis way," said Carry, curling up into position, with one arm
around Mrs. Tretherick's neck and her cheek resting on her bosom--
"dis way--dere." After a little preparatory nestling, not unlike
some small animal, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep.
For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe
in that artificial attitude. And then, whether from some occult
sympathy in the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began
to thrill her. She began by remembering an old pain that she had
forgotten, an old horror that she had resolutely put away all these
years. She recalled days of sickness and distrust--days of an
overshadowing fear--days of preparation for something that was to
be prevented, that WAS prevented, with mortal agony and fear. She
thought of a life that might have been--she dared not say HAD been-
-and wondered. It was six years ago; if it had lived, it would
have been as old as Carry. The arms which were folded loosely
around the sleeping child began to tremble, and tighten their
clasp. And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a half-
sob, half-sigh, she threw her arms out and drew the body of the
sleeping child down, down, into her breast, down again and again as
if she would hide it in the grave dug there years before. And the
gust that shook her passed, and then, ah me! the rain.
A drop or two fell upon the curls of Carry, and she moved uneasily
in her sleep. But the woman soothed her again--it was SO easy to
do it now--and they sat there quiet and undisturbed, so quiet that
they might have seemed incorporate of the lonely silent house, the
slowly declining sunbeams, and the general air of desertion and
abandonment, yet a desertion that had in it nothing of age, decay,
or despair.
Colonel Starbottle waited at the Fiddletown Hotel all that night in
vain. And the next morning, when Mr. Tretherick returned to his
husks, he found the house vacant and untenanted, except by motes
and sunbeams.
When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking
Mr. Tretherick's own child with her, there was some excitement and
much diversity of opinion, in Fiddletown. THE DUTCH FLAT
INTELLIGENCER openly alluded to the "forcible abduction" of the
child with the same freedom, and it is to be feared the same
prejudice, with which it had criticized the abductor's poetry. All
of Mrs. Tretherick's own sex, and perhaps a few of the opposite
sex, whose distinctive quality was not, however, very strongly
indicated, fully coincided in the views of the INTELLIGENCER. The
majority, however, evaded the moral issue; that Mrs. Tretherick had
shaken the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty slippers was
enough for them to know. They mourned the loss of the fair
abductor more than her offense. They promptly rejected Tretherick
as an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far
as to openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief. They
reserved an ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing
that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in
barrooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed
favorable to the display of sentiment. "She was alliz a skittish
thing, Kernel," said one sympathizer, with a fine affectation of
gloomy concern and great readiness of illustration; "and it's
kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away someday, and stampede that theer
colt: but thet she should shake YOU, Kernel, diet she should jist
shake you--is what gits me. And they do say thet you jist hung
around thet hotel all night, and payrolled them corriders, and
histed yourself up and down them stairs, and meandered in and out
o' thet piazzy, and all for nothing?" It was another generous and
tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine
on the colonel's wounds. "The boys yer let on thet Mrs. Tretherick
prevailed on ye to pack her trunk and a baby over from the house to
the stage offis, and that the chap ez did go off with her thanked
you, and offered you two short bits, and sed ez how he liked your
looks, and ud emplo
y you agin--and now you say it ain't so? Well,
I'll tell the boys it ain't so, and I'm glad I met you, for stories
DO get round."
Happily for Mrs. Tretherick's reputation, however, the Chinaman in
Tretherick's employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight,
stated that she was unaccompanied, except by the child. He further
deposed that, obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento
coach, and secured a passage for herself and child to San
Francisco. It was true that Ah Fe's testimony was of no legal
value. But nobody doubted it. Even those who were skeptical of
the pagan's ability to recognize the sacredness of the truth
admitted his passionless, unprejudiced unconcern. But it would
appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of this veracious
chronicle, that herein they were mistaken.
It was about six months after the disappearance of Mrs. Tretherick
that Ah Fe, while working in Tretherick's lot, was hailed by two
passing Chinamen. They were the ordinary mining coolies, equipped
with long poles and baskets for their usual pilgrimages. An
animated conversation at once ensued between Ah Fe and his brother
Mongolians--a conversation characterized by that usual shrill
volubility and apparent animosity which was at once the delight and
scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who did not understand a word of
it. Such, at least, was the feeling with which Mr. Tretherick on
his veranda and Colonel Starbottle, who was passing, regarded their
heathenish jargon. The gallant colonel simply kicked them out of
his way; the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a stone at the
group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips of
yellow rice paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a
small parcel put into Ah Fe's hands. When Ah Fe opened this in the
dim solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron,
freshly washed, ironed, and folded. On the corner of the hem were
the initials "C. T." Ah Fe tucked it away in a corner of his
blouse, and proceeded to wash his dishes in the sink with a smile
of guileless satisfaction.
Two days after this, Ah Fe confronted his master. "Me no likee
Fiddletown. Me belly sick. Me go now." Mr. Tretherick violently
suggested a profane locality. Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and
withdrew.
Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Colonel
Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently
interested that gentleman. When he concluded, the colonel handed
him a letter and a twenty-dollar gold piece. "If you bring me an
answer, I'll double that--sabe, John?" Ah Fe nodded. An interview
equally accidental, with precisely the same result, took place
between Ah Fe and another gentleman, whom I suspect to have been
the youthful editor of the AVALANCHE. Yet I regret to state that,
after proceeding some distance
on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke
the seals of both letters, and after trying to read them upside
down and sideways, finally divided them into accurate squares, and
in this condition disposed of them to a brother Celestial whom he
met on the road, for a trifling gratuity. The agony of Colonel
Starbottle on finding his wash bill made out on the unwritten side
of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean
clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions
of his letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese
laundry of one Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as
peculiarly affecting. Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature,
rising above the levity induced by the mere contemplation of the
insignificant details of this breach of trust, would find ample
retributive justice in the difficulties that subsequently attended
Ah Fe's pilgrimage.
On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the
top of the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated
Caucasian, whose moral nature was shocked at riding with one
addicted to opium-smoking. At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing
stranger--purely an act of Christian supererogation. At Dutch Flat
he was robbed by well-known hands from unknown motives. At
Sacramento he was arrested on suspicion of being something or
other, and discharged with a severe reprimand--possibly for not
being it, and so delaying the course of justice. At San Francisco
he was freely stoned by children of the public schools; but, by
carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened progress, he at
last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese quarters, where
his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the strong arm
of the law.
The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant,
and on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes
to Chy Fook's several clients.
It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept
hill of California Street--one of those bleak, gray intervals that
made the summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan
fancy. There was no warmth or color in earth or sky, no light nor
shade within or without, only one monotonous, universal neutral
tint over everything. There was a fierce unrest in the wind-
whipped streets: there was a dreary vacant quiet in the gray
houses. When Ah Fe reached the top of the hill, the Mission Ridge
was already hidden, and the chill sea breeze made him shiver. As
he put down his basket to rest himself, it is possible that, to his
defective intelligence and heathen experience, this "God's own
climate," as was called, seemed to possess but scant tenderness,
softness, or mercy. But it is possible that Ah Fe illogically
confounded this season with his old persecutors, the
schoolchildren, who, bein
g released from studious confinement, at
this hour were generally most aggressive. So he hastened on, and
turning a corner, at last stopped before a small house.
It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage. There was the
little strip of cold green shrubbery before it; the chilly, bare
veranda, and above this, again, the grim balcony, on which no one
sat. Ah Fe rang the bell. A servant appeared, glanced at his
basket, and reluctantly admitted him, as if he were some necessary
domestic animal. Ah Fe silently mounted the stairs, and entering
the open door of the front chamber, put down the basket and stood
passively on the threshold.
A woman, who was sitting in the cold gray light of the window, with
a child in her lap, rose listlessly, and came toward him. Ah Fe
instantly recognized Mrs. Tretherick; but not a muscle of his
immobile face changed, nor did his slant eyes lighten as he met her
own placidly. She evidently did not recognize him as she began to
count the clothes. But the child, curiously examining him,
suddenly uttered a short, glad cry.
"Why, it's John, Mamma! It's our old John what we had in
Fiddletown."
For an instant Ah Fe's eyes and teeth electrically lightened. The
child clapped her hands, and caught at his blouse. Then he said
shortly: "Me John--Ah Fe--allee same. Me know you. How do?"
Mrs. Tretherick dropped the clothes nervously, and looked hard at
Ah Fe. Wanting the quick-witted instinct of affection that
sharpened Carry's perception, she even then could not distinguish
him above his fellows. With a recollection of past pain, and an
obscure suspicion of impending danger, she asked him when he had
left Fiddletown.
"Longee time. No likee Fiddletown, no likee Tlevelick. Likee San
Flisco. Likee washee. Likee Tally."
Ah Fe's laconics pleased Mrs. Tretherick. She did not stop to
consider how much an imperfect knowledge of English added to his
curt directness and sincerity. But she said, "Don't tell anybody
you have seen me," and took out her pocketbook.
Ah Fe, without looking at it, saw that it was nearly empty. Ah Fe,
without examining the apartment, saw that it was scantily
furnished. Ah Fe, without removing his eyes from blank vacancy,
saw that both Mrs. Tretherick and Carry were poorly dressed. Yet
it is my duty to state that Ah Fe's long fingers closed promptly
and firmly over the half-dollar which Mrs. Tretherick extended to
him.
Then he began to fumble in his blouse with a series of
extraordinary contortions. After a few moments, he extracted from
apparently no particular place a child's apron, which he laid upon
the basket with the remark:
"One piecee washman flagittee."
Then he began anew his fumblings and contortions. At last his
efforts were rewarded by his producing, apparently from his right
ear, a many-fol
ded piece of tissue paper. Unwrapping this
carefully, he at last disclosed two twenty-dollar gold pieces,
which he handed to Mrs. Tretherick.
"You leavee money topside of blulow, Fiddletown. Me findee money.
Me fetchee money to you. All lightee."
"But I left no money on the top of the bureau, John," said Mrs.
Tretherick earnestly. "There must be some mistake. It belongs to
some other person. Take it back, John."
Ah Fe's brow darkened. He drew away from Mrs. Tretherick's
extended hand, and began hastily to gather up his basket.
"Me no takee it back. No, no! Bimeby pleesman he catchee me. He
say, 'God damn thief!--catchee flowty dollar: come to jailee.' Me
no takee back. You leavee money topside blulow, Fiddletown. Me
fetchee money you. Me no takee back."
Mrs. Tretherick hesitated. In the confusion of her flight, she
MIGHT have left the money in the manner he had said. In any event,
she had no right to jeopardize this honest Chinaman's safety by
refusing it. So she said: "Very well, John, I will keep it. But
you must come again and see me--" here Mrs. Tretherick hesitated
with a new and sudden revelation of the fact that any man could
wish to see any other than herself--"and, and--Carry."
Ah Fe's face lightened. He even uttered a short ventriloquistic
laugh without moving his mouth. Then, shouldering his basket, he
shut the door carefully and slid quietly down stairs. In the lower
hall he, however, found an unexpected difficulty in opening the
front door, and, after fumbling vainly at the lock for a moment,
looked around for some help or instruction. But the Irish handmaid
who had let him in was contemptuously oblivious of his needs, and
did not appear.
There occurred a mysterious and painful incident, which I shall
simply record without attempting to explain. On the hall table a
scarf, evidently the property of the servant before alluded to, was
lying. As Ah Fe tried the lock with one hand, the other rested
lightly on the table. Suddenly, and apparently of its own
volition, the scarf began to creep slowly toward Ah Fe's hand; from
Ah Fe's hand it began to creep up his sleeve slowly, and with an
insinuating, snakelike motion; and then disappeared somewhere in
the recesses of his blouse. Without betraying the least interest
or concern in this phenomenon, Ah Fe still repeated his experiments
upon the lock. A moment later the tablecloth of red damask, moved
by apparently the same mysterious impulse, slowly gathered itself
under Ah Fe's fingers, and sinuously disappeared by the same hidden
channel. What further mystery might have followed, I cannot say;
for at this moment Ah Fe discovered the secret of the lock, and was
enabled to open the door coincident with the sound of footsteps
upon the kitchen stairs. Ah Fe did not hasten his movements, but
patiently shou
ldering his basket, closed the door carefully behind
him again, and stepped forth into the thick encompassing fog that
now shrouded earth and sky.
From her high casement window, Mrs. Tretherick watched Ah Fe's
figure until it disappeared in the gray cloud. In her present
loneliness, she felt a keen sense of gratitude toward him, and may
have ascribed to the higher emotions and the consciousness of a
good deed that certain expansiveness of the chest, and swelling of
the bosom, that was really due to the hidden presence of the scarf
and tablecloth under his blouse. For Mrs. Tretherick was still
poetically sensitive. As the gray fog deepened into night, she
drew Carry closer toward her, and, above the prattle of the child,
pursued a vein of sentimental and egotistic recollection at once
bitter and dangerous. The sudden apparition of Ah Fe linked her
again with her past life at Fiddletown. Over the dreary interval
between, she was now wandering--a journey so piteous, willful,
thorny, and useless that it was no wonder that at last Carry
stopped suddenly in the midst of her voluble confidences to throw
her small arms around the woman's neck, and bid her not to cry.
Heaven forefend that I should use a pen that should be ever
dedicated to an exposition of unalterable moral principle to
transcribe Mrs. Tretherick's own theory of this interval and
episode, with its feeble palliations, its illogical deductions, its
fond excuses, and weak apologies. It would seem, however, that her
experience had been hard. Her slender stock of money was soon
exhausted. At Sacramento she found that the composition of verse,
although appealing to the highest emotions of the human heart, and
compelling the editorial breast to the noblest commendation in the
editorial pages, was singularly inadequate to defray the expenses
of herself and Carry. Then she tried the stage, but failed
signally. Possibly her conception of the passions was different
from that which obtained with a Sacramento audience; but it was
certain that her charming presence, so effective at short range,
was not sufficiently pronounced for the footlights. She had
admirers enough in the greenroom, but awakened no abiding affection
among the audience. In this strait, it occurred to her that she
had a voice--a contralto of no very great compass or cultivation,
but singularly sweet and touching; and she finally obtained
position in a church choir. She held it for three months, greatly
to her pecuniary advantage, and, it is said, much to the
satisfaction of the gentlemen in the back pews, who faced toward
her during the singing of the last hymn.
I remember her quite distinctly at this time. The light that
slanted through the oriel of St. Dives's choir was wont to fall
very tenderly on her beautiful head with its stacked masses of
deerskin-colored hair, on the
low black arches of her brows, and to
deepen the pretty fringes that shaded her eyes of Genoa velvet.
Very pleasant it was to watch the opening and shutting of that
small straight mouth, with its quick revelation of little white
teeth, and to see the foolish blood faintly deepen her satin cheek
as you watched. For Mrs. Tretherick was very sweetly conscious of
admiration and, like most pretty women, gathered herself under your
eye like a racer under the spur.
And then, of course, there came trouble. I have it from the
soprano--a little lady who possessed even more than the usual
unprejudiced judgment of her sex--that Mrs. Tretherick's conduct
was simply shameful; that her conceit was unbearable; that, if she
considered the rest of the choir as slaves, she (the soprano) would
like to know it; that her conduct on Easter Sunday with the basso
had attracted the attention of the whole congregation; and that she
herself had noticed Dr. Cope twice look up during the service; that
her (the soprano's) friends had objected to her singing in the
choir with a person who had been on the stage, but she had waived
this. Yet she had it from the best authority that Mrs. Tretherick
had run away from her husband, and that this red-haired child who
sometimes came in the choir was not her own. The tenor confided to
me behind the organ that Mrs. Tretherick had a way of sustaining a
note at the end of a line in order that her voice might linger
longer with the congregation--an act that could be attributed only
to a defective moral nature; that as a man (he was a very popular
dry goods clerk on weekdays, and sang a good deal from apparently
behind his eyebrows on the Sabbath)--that as a man, sir, he would
put up with it no longer. The basso alone--a short German with a
heavy voice, for which he seemed reluctantly responsible, and
rather grieved at its possession--stood up for Mrs. Tretherick, and
averred that they were jealous of her because she was "bretty."
The climax was at last reached in an open quarrel, wherein Mrs.
Tretherick used her tongue with such precision of statement and
epithet that the soprano burst into hysterical tears, and had to be
supported from the choir by her husband and the tenor. This act
was marked intentionally to the congregation by the omission of the
usual soprano solo. Mrs. Tretherick went home flushed with
triumph, but on reaching her room frantically told Carry that they
were beggars henceforward; that she--her mother--had just taken the
very bread out of her darling's mouth, and ended by bursting into a
flood of penitent tears. They did not come so quickly as in her
old poetical days; but when they came they stung deeply. She was
roused by a formal visit from a vestryman--one of the music
committee. Mrs. Tretherick dried her long lashes, put on a new
neck ribbon, and went down to the parlor.
She staid there two
hours--a fact that might have occasioned some remark but that the
vestryman was married, and had a family of grownup daughters. When
Mrs. Tretherick returned to her room, she sang to herself in the
glass and scolded Carry--but she retained her place in the choir.
It was not long, however. In due course of time, her enemies
received a powerful addition to their forces in the committeeman's
wife. That lady called upon several of the church members and on
Dr. Cope's family. The result was that, at a later meeting of the
music committee, Mrs. Tretherick's voice was declared inadequate to
the size of the building and she was invited to resign. She did
so. She had been out of a situation for two months, and her scant
means were almost exhausted, when Ah Fe's unexpected treasure was
tossed into her lap.
The gray fog deepened into night, and the street lamps started into
shivering life as, absorbed in these unprofitable memories, Mrs.
Tretherick still sat drearily at her window. Even Carry had
slipped away unnoticed; and her abrupt entrance with the damp
evening paper in her hand roused Mrs. Tretherick, and brought her
back to an active realization of the present. For Mrs. Tretherick
was wont to scan the advertisements in the faint hope of finding
some avenue of employment--she knew not what--open to her needs;
and Carry had noted this habit.
Mrs. Tretherick mechanically closed the shutters, lit the lights,
and opened the paper. Her eye fell instinctively on the following
paragraph in the telegraphic column:
FIDDLETOWN, 7th.--Mr. James Tretherick, an old resident of this
place, died last night of delirium tremens. Mr. Tretherick was
addicted to intemperate habits, said to have been induced by
domestic trouble.
Mrs. Tretherick did not start. She quietly turned over another
page of the paper, and glanced at Carry. The child was absorbed in
a book. Mrs. Tretherick uttered no word, but during the remainder
of the evening was unusually silent and cold. When Carry was
undressed and in bed, Mrs. Tretherick suddenly dropped on her knees
beside the bed, and, taking Carry's flaming head between her hands,
said:
"Should you like to have another papa, Carry, darling?"
"No," said Carry, after a moment's thought.
"But a papa to help Mamma take care of you, to love you, to give
you nice clothes, to make a lady of you when you grow up?"
Carry turned her sleepy eyes toward the questioner. "Should YOU,
Mamma?"
Mrs. Tretherick suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair. "Go to
sleep," she said sharply, and turned away.
But at midnight the child felt two white arms close tightly around
her, and was drawn down into a bosom that heaved, fluttered, and at
last was broken up by sobs.
"Don't ky, Mamma," whispered Carry, with a vague retrospect of
their recent conversation. "Don't ky. I fink I SHOULD like a new
papa, if he loved you very much--very, very much!"
A month afterward, to everybody's astonishment, Mrs. Tretherick was
married. The happy bridegroom was one Colonel Starbottle, recently
elected to represent Calaveras County in the legislative councils
of the State. As I cannot record the event in finer language than
that used by the correspondent of THE SACRAMENTO GLOBE, I venture
to quote some of his graceful periods. "The relentless shafts of
the sly god have been lately busy among our gallant Solons. We
quote 'one more unfortunate.' The latest victim is the Hon. C.
Starbottle of Calaveras. The fair enchantress in the case is a
beautiful widow, a former votary of Thespis, and lately a
fascinating St. Cecilia of one of the most fashionable churches of
San Francisco, where she commanded a high salary."
THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER saw fit, however, to comment upon the
fact with that humorous freedom characteristic of an unfettered
press. "The new Democratic war horse from Calaveras has lately
advented in the legislature with a little bill to change the name
of Tretherick to Starbottle. They call it a marriage certificate
down there. Mr. Tretherick has been dead just one month; but we
presume the gallant colonel is not afraid of ghosts." It is but
just to Mrs. Tretherick to state that the colonel's victory was by
no means an easy one. To a natural degree of coyness on the part
of the lady was added the impediment of a rival--a prosperous
undertaker from Sacramento, who had first seen and loved Mrs.
Tretherick at the theater and church, his professional habits
debarring him from ordinary social intercourse, and indeed any
other than the most formal public contact with the sex. As this
gentleman had made a snug fortune during the felicitous prevalence
of a severe epidemic, the colonel regarded him as a dangerous
rival. Fortunately, however, the undertaker was called in
professionally to lay out a brother senator, who had unhappily
fallen by the colonel's pistol in an affair of honor; and either
deterred by physical consideration from rivalry, or wisely
concluding that the colonel was professionally valuable, he
withdrew from the field.
The honeymoon was brief, and brought to a close by an untoward
incident. During their bridal trip, Carry had been placed in the
charge of Colonel Starbottle's sister. On their return to the
city, immediately on reaching their lodgings, Mrs. Starbottle
announced her intention of at once proceeding to Mrs. Culpepper's
to bring the child home. Colonel Starbottle, who had been
exhibiting for some time a certain uneasiness which he had
endeavored to overcome by repeated stimulation, finally buttoned
his coat tightly across his breast, and after walking unsteadily
once or twice up and down the r
oom, suddenly faced his wife with
his most imposing manner.
"I have deferred," said the colonel with an exaggeration of port
that increased with his inward fear, and a growing thickness of
speech--"I have deferr--I may say poshponed statement o' fack thash
my duty ter dishclose ter ye. I did no wish to mar sushine mushal
happ'ness, to bligh bud o' promise, to darken conjuglar sky by
unpleasht revelashun. Musht be done--by God, m'm, musht do it now.
The chile is gone!"
"Gone!" echoed Mrs. Starbottle.
There was something in the tone of her voice, in the sudden
drawing-together of the pupils of her eyes, that for a moment
nearly sobered the colonel, and partly collapsed his chest.
"I'll splain all in a minit," he said with a deprecating wave of
the hand. "Everything shall be splained. The-the-the-melencholly
event wish preshipitate our happ'ness--the myster'us prov'nice wish
releash you--releash chile! hunerstan?--releash chile. The mom't
Tretherick die--all claim you have in chile through him--die too.
Thash law. Who's chile b'long to? Tretherick? Tretherick dead.
Chile can't b'long dead man. Damn nonshense b'long dead man. I'sh
your chile? no! whose chile then? Chile b'long to 'ts mother.
Unnerstan?"
"Where is she?" said Mrs. Starbottle, with a very white face and a
very low voice.
"I'll splain all. Chile b'long to 'ts mother. Thash law. I'm
lawyer, leshlator, and American sis'n. Ish my duty as lawyer, as
leshlator, and 'merikan sis'n to reshtore chile to suff'rin mother
at any coss--any coss."
"Where is she?" repeated Mrs. Starbottle, with her eyes still fixed
on the colonel's face.
"Gone to 'ts m'o'r. Gone East on shteamer, yesserday. Waffed by
fav'rin gales to suff'rin p'rent. Thash so!"
Mrs. Starbottle did not move. The colonel felt his chest slowly
collapsing, but steadied himself against a chair, and endeavored to
beam with chivalrous gallantry not unmixed with magisterial
firmness upon her as she sat.
"Your feelin's, m'm, do honor to yer sex, but conshider situashun.
Conshider m'or's feelings--conshider MY feelin's." The colonel
paused, and flourishing a white handkerchief, placed it negligently
in his breast, and then smiled tenderly above it, as over laces and
ruffles, on the woman before him. "Why should dark shed-der cass
bligh on two sholes with single beat? Chile's fine chile, good
chile, but summonelse chile! Chile's gone, Clar'; but all ish'n't
gone, Clar'. Conshider dearesht, you all's have me!"
Mrs. Starbottle started to her feet. "YOU!" she cried, bringing
out a chest note that made the chandeliers ring--"You that I
married to give my darling food and clothes--YOU! a dog that I
whistled to my side to keep the men off me--YOU!"
She choked up, and then dashed past him into the inner room, which
had been Carry's; the